Jay-Z stabs Lance 'Un' Rivera at the Q-Tip Amplified release party

Why it matters

December 1, 1999. At a release party for Q-Tip's Amplified at the Kit Kat Klub in Manhattan, Jay-Z stabbed Lance "Un" Rivera, an Untertainment Records executive. The reported motive was a bootlegging dispute over Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life. The stabbing happened in front of multiple witnesses. Jay-Z was arrested. He pled guilty to misdemeanor assault in October 2001 and received three years' probation. This is the part of Jay-Z's biography that often gets folded into the larger narrative of his pre-Reasonable-Doubt life as a hustler. The stabbing was 1999. He was 30. He was three platinum albums into his career. The crime was an adult-Jay-Z crime, not a young-Jay-Z one. He references it on "You Must Love Me" on Vol. 2 and on "Guess Who's Back" on The Dynasty: Roc La Familia. The probation is the closest he came to doing prison time. The episode shaped, in ways he has discussed in interviews and in The Black Album, his decision to pull back from the active street life and lean fully into the business side of the operation. You can argue the stabbing was the moment Shawn Carter started to retire and Jay-Z the CEO started to take over. The dates fit.